When I take up something for the first time, I prefer to learn by a trial by error basis. If at first I don’t succeed, I will try again, changing something that I did, adjusting my abilities. Trying to be perfect all at once won’t give me the the thrill of victory later on. Always having a milestone to reach motivates me to do better.

We are born with basically two kinds of brain, the analytical, fact based one, and the colorful, creative one. The strengths of either one are purely determined by genetics and other factors, such as the environment one grows up in. It is interesting to see how the brain ended up like this, so perfectly arranged with traits organized into their own pools. Our evolution must have favored the best of both worlds and what better than to have them side by side? I wonder what a person with just one half of their brain is like. Would they be purely analytical or artful or is it not as straightforward as the picture shows?

I like to say I use both sides of my brain, the analytical and creative side, fairly equally. I can crunch the numbers and dive into the data when it is needed, and launch a wave of art and vivid storytelling, but it is to say that different emotions and moods activate different parts of each half, some mixing together.

It’s hard to say if I am a more visual learner or audio learner, because both methods work well for me. Pictures seem to present the idea in a bigger and brighter form, right in my face, sinking into my mind faster while just hearing the words helps me analyze and form the images and patterns myself, helping me memorize without the need of actual pictures so I can retrieve them later on.

Trying to learn something, such as the guitar, with a video, is difficult because I have to keep going back and reseeing bits and pieces if I don’t fully understand it at first. Seeing it demonstrated in picture form slows down the learning process so I can learn it at my own pace. When the teaching isn’t going faster than I can comprehend something, I can easily learn and practice. Group learning is okay for me sometimes because everyone can contribute but when the faster learners start demanding that the level of difficulty be raised and the teacher starts to speed up for them, while expecting the slower learners to keep up, I easily get lost and fall behind, trying my best to catch up before completely throwing in the towel.

When I look at the brain picture above, I immediately lean towards the right half of the brain. All of the words contained there, creativity, passion, poetry, freedom, peace, love, best describe my personality which is lighthearted and easy-going. I’m definitely not hard edge and my vivid learning process with pictures proves that. There is a science book that a friend gave me the other day; I have yet to read the first chapter. I can watch science in videos but I have a hard time reading it.

What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in a group and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do you retain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simply by reading books?